Mandy Urena was born in Coventry, England where Lady Godiva famously rode through the streets naked on horseback. Fortunately, she cannot also make those claims herself. She went to an all-girls boarding school which cultivated her rebellious nature and after graduating, all she wanted to do was see the world and travel to exotic, far-away lands. At age 18 she had ants in her pants and a completely crap B-movie called Not Quite Jerusalem, sparked her interest to go and work on a kibbutz in Israel just to taste a different culture. But from there, she never looked back and never went home. Instead, she took trains, planes, rickety old buses and hitch-hiked through 59 countries. On her travels, she picked up a husband - a G.I. in the Air Force from New York - who was stationed in Tokyo. Together they hopped from duty station to duty station, living in Japan, Germany, New Jersey, Spain, and Guam. This year they live in New Mexico with their beloved Bernese mountain dog, Cheyenne, but due to the transitory nature of the Air Force, who knows where they will be next year?

Mandy has been a massage therapist for 22 years and started writing about her life of massage in Guam when there was nothing good on TV and it was too hot to go to the beach. Her books are a collection of humorous tales of her family’s nomadic life traipsing around the world with her trusted massage table in tow, stopping for plenty of fun and frivolity along the way.

TOUCHY, FEELY, SQUEEZY: Musings of a Masseuse is her debut memoir and she is also the co-author of the upcoming canine memoir, In the Dog House, which she wrote with Cheyenne. Look for her next book set in Japan entitled Kimpatsu: Musings of a Blonde in Tokyo.